I disagree. Even if just YOU boycott and no one else does. The boycott does something. Even if you don’t believe in it, step aside and push the train forward while it passes you. Don’t create friction.
Comment on Amazon Boycot March 7-14th | No Purchases. Its time to disrupt the system.
Xanza@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Boycotts like this do nothing because the people most willing to “participate” are people who already don’t purchase from Amazon. Even if you were able to get a critical mass of people to participate for even 3 months. So what? Amazon will post 1 bad quarter and then things go back to business as usual. Nothing happens. They don’t even really lose any money. At least none out of pocket, of which they have plenty for things such as this.
Amazon is a subscription model. You want to hurt them, then hurt their subscriptions. Don’t boycott them, cancel Prime.
4dagoth@lemmy.world 1 day ago
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I agree with the principal of personal boycotts, though not effective in doing anything to affect the companies that you are boycotting, are necessary. But OP is right. For instance I have been boycotting Chick-fil-A for the last 10 years because I don’t agree with their homophobic attitude. But it has zero effect on their bottom line because no one else boycotts them or even cares. I think the kesson is that you should not expect any kind of real outcome from your personal boycott of a company. You should just be satisfied that you are not personally supporting that company.
joel_feila@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah i stopped using amazon years ago. So I can’t really join. Plus amazon makes so much money from orime sub aand truly absence amounts from aws.
rational_lib@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s very hard to avoid buying stuff on Amazon even if we hate them. This provides a bit of extra motivation.
spacequetzal@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I used to buy a ton of Amazon stuff. Mostly art supplies, pet supplies, clothes, novelties I didn’t need.
One day, I was browsing Reddit and I was like-- “what is this boycott thing all about?” and then I started by not ordering for one whole day!
Then one whole week!
Then one whole month!
Anyway, I ended up cancelling my Prime subscription, deleting my Amazon account completely, and cancelling my Prime Store credit card.
Then at work, for Valentine’s Day, we each received a $200 dollar Amazon gift card as an employee appreciation gift.
I spoke up and said that I would prefer to receive cash or nothing at all because my values did not align with Amazon-- which caused many of my coworkers to decline theirs as well.
It was so perplexing to leadership, that they decided that going forward they are just going to give us a $200 cash bonus on our paychecks
So anyways, that’s the impact one of these “pointless” boycott posts had on me.
Xanza@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I didn’t say they were pointless. I say they don’t do anything. What does do something is this;
That’s it. You “buying a ton” on amazon is small peanuts in the grand scheme. Even if you buy a lot amazon is only making a percentage of whatever you spend. Something like 30%. So even if you spend $10k in a year, they make $3,000 net and have to deduct for the cost of getting those items to you. When all the financials are worked out, it’s next to nothing.
The price of their subscription service is their e-penis. They get to say “500 million people pay for Amazon Prime!” @ $139/yr is $69.5 billion. You can buy nothing and they can still survive… But if you stop paying for Prime they lose their e-penis, which affects their stock price, which loses them bargaining rights with their suppliers and ultimately can affect the price of Prime itself.
It’s the surest way to kill them.
spacequetzal@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Woosh.
A simple no-buy for one day boycott led to the way to Prime cancellation.
More than one, actually. I talked to my sister about it and she ended up cancelling hers as well. A couple of our friends did as well.